The 13th breath

Excerpt from my journal, 20th of January 2025:

[…] 13 years ago today, I knew it was only a matter of time before my life changed completely.

Cancer had been eating away at your body for 5 years and death had been trying to take you for 5 years.

Death fears no one and yet you were a fighter, and I think even it knows how lively you are. In the end, death never knew how to kill you.

I could never have known what your death would provoke in me 13 years ago today, but, on January 20, 2012, and 13 years later today, I can tell you that your life builds my death, your death is my life.

Life is the way to death, and death is the way to life.

You and me forever. You, forever.

Your death leads me to birth and rebirth because death is not the end.

Because your death only showed me your immortality.

Just thinking about you makes me happy. I don’t know why I thought I had to stop talking to you on paper but deep down there’s no way I can stop talking to you because I want to be who you are and I am who you are. Invincible. Faithful to you, faithful to me, forever.

Forever I will address to you, mam.

Because it’s you and all that you are that gives meaning to all that is.

I’m filled with joy and gratitude as the pen glides and the edge of my hand caresses the paper with each word that inks onto the blank page to fill it with sweat, saliva, blood, tears, joy, life. With my life. With life. With you.

This blank page I fill to talk to you. That I fill to understand the depth, the abundance, the infinity of emotions and the timelessness of our bond, you and me. Because you are my mother. Immortal. You transcend time.

No one and nothing can change the fact that I have a mother. I have a mother.

I have a mother, and forever I’ll have a mother. Just like everyone else.

What others don’t have is MY mother. You.

It was you, it is you, it will be you.

Forever and ever.

What a privilege to look at my hands and see yours.

What a gift to have in my eyes your gaze. In my eyes, the same color as in yours.

In my sister’s face, your fine features. On her fingers your rings and around her neck (and hips) your necklaces and jewelry.

What a gift to be able to wear your dresses and inhabit your body again. To understand what kind of woman I am in your clothes. What a woman you are and what women you’ve given birth to.

Two women who are lucky to have been conceived by you and who live on through you.

I hope you know that.

I hope you never forget that you’re not forgotten, that you’ll never be forgotten.

I hope you know that you’re unforgettable. Just because of who you are. Because you are.

You are the warmth of the sun and the glow of the moon.

You are the earth beneath our feet and the whole sky.

How can we even express all this beauty when you’re everywhere, all the time?

We sometimes lose you, but we always find you.

Sometimes we lose ourselves, but we always find you.

We look up and there you are. You’re in the brightness of the stars, our laughing star, our goddess of light, our mother.

Forever and ever.

We miss you. We will forever miss you.

Your daughters.